Trump reinstates summit with Kim
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday capped a week of whipsaw talks by reinstating a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un just days after he had abruptly canceled it, but he also sought to lower expectations over the potential for a quick denuclearization deal.
Trump made the announcement in impromptu remarks outside the South Portico after meeting for more than 90 minutes with a top Kim aide in the Oval Office. Kim Yong Chol, the vice-chairman of North Korea’s Central Committee, delivered a personal letter from the young dictator, a gesture viewed as an effort to ease tensions after Trump abruptly called things off last week amid escalating threats from Pyongyang.
But even as the president hailed the restart of his highstakes diplomatic endeavor, he acknowledged that a full breakthrough on long-stymied U.S. efforts to eliminate the North’s nuclear weapons program would be unlikely at
the summit, set for June 12 in Singapore.
“I never said it goes in one meeting,” Trump told reporters, after walking Kim Yong Chol to a black SUV outside the South Portico and taking pictures with him and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “I think it’s going to be a process. But the relationships are building, and that’s a very positive thing.”
Trump characterized the summit — the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader — as “a beginning” and a “getting to know you meeting-plus” in his effort to apply his unorthodox brand of personal diplomacy to a challenge that has vexed his predecessors.
“You’re talking about years of hostility; years of problems; years of, really, hatred between so many different nations,” Trump said. “But I think you’re going to have a very positive result in the end. Not from one meeting.”
The president’s remarks suggested that his administration is coming to terms with the widely held view among former U.S. officials that Kim Jong Un has no intention of quickly relinquishing an arsenal his family has spent decades assembling.
The near-collapse of the summit, after a hostile response from Pyongyang to suggestions from Trump aides that the United States would demand a rapid denuclearization process, offered new evidence that any path to a deal is likely to be marked by fits and starts and threatened by potential land mines.
Past U.S. administrations have accused North Korea of violating agreements with additional nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Asked Friday if he was confident that the North Korean regime was committed to denuclearization, the president said: “I think they want to do that. I know they want to do that.”
But Trump also suggested additional summit meetings with Kim could be necessary.
“I told them, ‘I think that you’re going to have, probably, others,’ ” Trump said. “‘Hey, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we walked out and everything was settled all of a sudden from sitting down for a couple of hours?’ No, I don’t see that happening. But I see over a period of time.”